Brussels, 08/04/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 7 April, Colonel Ricardo Gonzalez Elul (Spain), the EUTM Commander in Somalia, gave the order to activate the Somali security force training mission, which will take place over a period of around 13 months in Bihanga, South East Uganda, near the Rwandan and Congolese borders.
Around 100 European soldiers will be in charge of weapons training for 2,000 Somalis (mainly small arms), infantry combat tactics, mine and improvised explosive devices disposal and urban combat. To this end, the Bihanga camp has to be adapted in order to provide appropriate firearms and urban combat training structures. First aid will be provided by a French doctor in the camp, three healthcare assistants and an ambulance driver. This team will also contain a surgical module provided by a private British company. Outside the camp, the mission's HQ will be based in Kampala (the Ugandan capital), a liaison cell in Nairobi (the Kenyan capital), with a support cell in Brussels. The 2,000 Somali recruits will be transported to Uganda by the US army, which will select them according to AMISOM (AU military operation in Somalia) criteria: minimum age, clan diversity, physical aptitude and records testifying that they have not committed any human rights violations. They will be divided into two groups of 1,000, who will benefit from six months' successive training before being redeployed to Mogadishu. The first training session is due to begin on 1 May next. A month's interval is planned after the first training session ends, in an effort to facilitate training rotation.
Total staff numbers for this European Union mission include 146 soldiers (100 in Bihanga, 41 in Kampala, 2 in Nairobi and 3 in Brussels). Mission participants include: Spain (38 soldiers), France (26), Italy (18), Portugal (15), Germany (13), Belgium (7), Ireland (5), Sweden (4), Hungary (4), Malta (3), Greece (2) and the United Kingdom (2).
During a press conference on Thursday 8 April in Brussels, a senior official stressed that the EUTM mission had been prepared in close cooperation with AMISOM, the African Union, the United Nations, Uganda and the US. Colonel Elul welcomed the fact that the entire cycle is covered in this cooperation framework: recruitment, deployment, equipment, pay, redeployment and monitoring.
The federal provisional government has around 10,000 troops and has called on the international community to train 6,000 taken from their total troop number. Four thousand of them have already been involved in a variety of different bilateral cooperation exercises. (O.J./transl.fl)